Hello? Ma?
The Blotter — Aha. Now we know the real reason to grab these records. To silence the media. My advice to reporters who are worried. Buy the last season of THE WIRE and examine how the drug dealers keep from getting caught.
Gee, and I thought this was all about catching terrorists.
A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.
“It’s time for you to get some new cell phones, quick,” the source told us in an in-person conversation.
ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.
Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.
found by John Markoff
This whole thing with domestic phone records is huge, and an open invitation to abuse. I know Republicans strongly support this sort of thing because they trust the President, but try to think ahead to a time far, far in the future when Democrats get their act together enough to put someone in the White House.
I know it seems unimaginable, but a Democratic presidency could happen in your lifetime. Do you trust him/her with your phone records — what number you called, what time of day, how long you spoke? Will you feel safe plotting to overthrow a Democratic Administration (you know you’ll want to)? All I’m saying is that this shouldn’t be a single-party issue.
Leaking is terrorism, dvorak. Duh!
And, at 8:39 PM – Google news is silent on this story
CNN.com is silent on this story
Yahoo news – Silent on this story
ABCnews.com – silent on this story
nyt.com – silent on this story
WHAT IS UP ????
#1. “…live in the police state he and his cronies are creating”.
The National Guard at our borders. Hahaha. The police state is here! Anyone who believes this is to keep them out can’t see the writing on the wall…it’s to keep us in.
This has been going on since the 1950s. ABC is the most laughable of agencies considering their connection to the CIA. Please. Threat inflation perfect example here.
I WANT my OLd phone BACK…Cant trace it…
Its amazing, that long ago, someone asked me if Digital was better then analog.
I had to tell them that it COULD be, if 90% of the reason, WASNT for security purposes…
I dont care what you use, and HOw good it looks. They spent MORE on security then a better picture, a better signal, a better anything…
the funny part…
You still can use analog signals, even on cellphones…And its STILL widly used in the rural areas, where digital ISNT in affect…
Sag, you might remember, it was Hillary and Bill Clinton who was sitting on top of confidential FBI files of their political opponents during their administration and they got a “pass” on what many felt was a grievous abuse of power. I don’t believe this is any more a GOP abuse of power then what Democratic Party has done in the past. The scope of government is getting too big and too seductive for either party to govern with restraint nowadays. IMO the best thing we can do to reign in big government is to take a serious look at term limits at all levels.
David, you honestly think the National Guard is going to keep you in the United States against your will?!?! Please tell me you aren’t serious.
You can drive across the Mexico border anytime you like. You can fly to Paris on the next jet. You can walk to Canada for lunch if you like.
Your comment sounds like alarmist hysteria. If you lived in one of the southern border states, you would realize the extent of the illegal immigration problem and wouldn’t be making wild claims of the rise of an iron curtain to keep you locked in.
If you want to leave the U.S., no one is going to stop you. Canada/Mexico beacons.
Sombody needs to invent a $10 gizmo you can plug into your phone to encrypt conversations.
ABC is a joke. Even more so than CBS…..maybe this isn’t being carried because it’s b$llsh$t.
Is the CIA pissed at them, I would suspect so, are their calls being monitored, I seriously doubt it. I know all the lefties on here think Bush is an idiot, but he’s no Nixon.
This is a hachet peice. The biggest hint that it is, is the statement **under Bush Administration guidelines**, the mass collection of phone numbers, and the numbers they connect to is not illegal, it is santioned by the courts, any police department in the country can do it, without a warrant. The warrant must be gotten to *monitor* actual calls, not the damn numbers.
This site is full of IT guys, internet freaks, experts and more computor nerds than is probably legal……and everyone one of you know exactly what they are doing with the numbers, and that they have no personal info about the numbers, and that the number of numbers runs into the hundreds of millions. There is no way in hell they could be listening into that many calls. This is a scenerio set up program, a probabilities program, nothing more. And, it’s perfectly LEGAL and dosen’t require a WARRANT.
I’ve never seen so many *the sky is falling* people in one place in my life. As usual, the left is playing the overkill game. The Democrats have the chance to take back the House and maybe even the Senate this year. But they probably won’t. WHY? Because they always play the *overkill* game, and the public just throws up it’s arms and votes they way they always have. You complain about EVERYTHING, call it illegal, nazi, the whole works, to the point that the really important things Bush is doing wrong gets buried in an avalanch of bu$$sh$t. The voters aren’t dumb(though they play dumb on t.v.)they finally just mark it up to silliness and vote Republican.
I’m an equal opprotunity basher, the right plays the same overkill game, but nothing like the Democrats do, and the big difference is…..the right wins elections.
So no proof, no evidence, just another “source says” story?
Riiiiiiiight.
I’ll say it again… we need to beat these creepy BIG BROTHER neo-cons with cheap technology.
Why the heck is our email sill not routinely encrypted?
It would cost NOTHING to add strong encryption to email clients.
Why aren’t at least the Thunderbird people doing this?
And how expensive would it be to build encryption into our home phones? Or a plug-in retrofit?
And why aren’t ALL websites SSL?
And why can’t ALL our browsing be by proxy servers?
Except for the phones, these solutions are cheap and readily available.
Do any of you rebember the echelon project that moniters every telex, fax, phone and email conversation ever sent. This wire tapping that is being done right now is anything anybody can do. Take you last cell phone bill with every number that you sent or recieved and you can go on line to do a reversere look-up on a number and find out who it was and where they live. The only time the NSA has leagal concerns is when they what to tap a seartain person.
#15 Joshua, congratulations — you seem to be extremely well-connected, since only selected members of Congress were briefed on this program, while most were unaware. Last week’s exposure of the massive NSA database of domestic telephone calling records promises to be a hot topic in the upcoming confirmation hearings for Gen. Hayden, but perhaps you can answer a few questions for me beforehand. When the database story was first broken last week in USA Today, were the telephone records of the reporters who wrote the story reviewed to discover who their sources might have been? When the secret CIA prisons in Europe (featuring new and improved interrogation techniques) were exposed to the American public, were the telephone records of those reporters reviewed to discover and punish the source? If a reporter writes a story tomorrow that embarrasses the Administration, what safeguards are in place to prevent the use of the calling information already at the NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA’s disposal to discover the sources for that story? What internal safeguards can possibly replace the oversight of a simple court warrant based on probable cause.
Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, may be one of your “sky is falling” reactionaries, but he had a pretty good comment nonetheless…
“Why are the telephone companies not protecting their customers? They have a social responsibility to people who do business with them to protect our privacy as long as there isn’t some suspicion that we’re a terrorist or a criminal or something.”
Finally, Qwest’s CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was reportedly troubled by the NSA’s assertion that Qwest didn’t need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. He should have talked to you instead of his lawyers, Joshua, before refusing to participate. I’m sure you would have been able to reassure him convincingly.
14,
they made them for analog phones.
They decided that SENCE Digital is ALREADY encoded, that you wouldnt need it….BUT, before they can be released, the GOV has to have a crack for it…DUH…
Well Gary…..maybe I actually read the *original* article on this in the New York Times back in December. They exposed(their words, not mine) this practice then and absolutly no one noticed.
My lawyer can get your phone records with a supeana. He barly has to show why. Podunk Police can get the same info the NSA gets without a warrant. And if I really want info on you, I can buy it from all of the phone company’s, everything is for sale.
If they show that the NSA did more than get the numbers, maybe like actually monitored calls without a warrant, then I’ll listen to your complaints, but until then I’ll just withold judgement.
Both parties leaders in congress were informed of this and knew about the program, for the Democrats to act shocked and surprised is like the birthday boy who planned his own surprise party.
There are 2 new polls out…..one from the Washington Post/ABC that was taken the day after the USA Today story broke, it showed 63% favored the program…..didn’t think it was an over reach, thought it was nessesary to fight terrorism. Today, Newsweek released a poll showing that 51% was AGAINST the program, but admitted that maybe they worded theirs differently…….no bull…….turns out that the Post/ABC poll explained that the program didn’t listen into calls, just gathered numbers…..the Newsweek poll forgot that part…..but the best part is, even with the skewed wording, 46% still was ok with the NSA program.
Here is a link to the Washington Post/ABC poll……plus a link to a very good story on this. It’s on Fox News site, but is an AP story. It’s not favorable, but is still a good read.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,195205,00.html
#22 Joshua, I had a hunch about your rather blasé attitude concerning this program, treating it as “old news,” but I didn’t want to jump to the wrong conclusion before you confirmed it. The fact is, this is a very different program from the one you read about last December. That one included full call monitoring, but one of the stated requirements of that program was that one end of the call had to terminate in a foreign country. This program is different in that it involves the structured data (time, length, number called), but does not include content monitoring.
This program is also much larger and affects nearly every citizen because it involves nearly all intra-USA calls. Quest has refused to participate so far, putting Quest-to-Quest calls outside the government’s database. So while the other program didn’t affect many of us because of its international nature, this one puts virtually all our calls (structured data only) within the grasp of U.S. intelligence agencies, and only their own internal controls govern how they handle the data. We can’t rely on the reasonable decisions of a judge as a safeguard.
If you have a Congressman who makes a call to an escort service, that information could end up in the hands of an unscrupulous political operative if internal controls somehow “broke down.” It wouldn’t be the first time political blackmail was ever used in this country. Also, news stories embarrassing to the administration could be tracked to their source, again assuming their unsupervised safeguards somehow “failed.” I think you can see the potential for misuse. Statistical analysis of call data and patterns may also reveal far more about you than you might imagine. Personally, I’d love to get my hands on the data. I bet I could mine significant information from the database that’s simply not available anywhere else.
(I see Smartalix #23 shares Quest’s concerns about legality)
Joshua, sorry buddy, but I disagree with you this time around. Simply put, we don’t know what else the Federal Government has or is doing as far as spying upon Americans. The President has lost all credibility so many will now just naturally think the worst. And I don’t count four people in the House being briefed in secret a very good disclosure.
Don’t you find it a little ironic that the government knows how often you phoned your girlfriend in Tempe, but has no idea where Osama bin Laden is?
Gary marks…..here is the link to the New York Times story. Read it, it covers both the eavesdropping story and the data mining story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html?ex=1293080400&en=016edb46b79bde83&ei=5090
I’m not saying that what the NSA has done is what they are telling us only…..I’m just saying that I have a more wait and see attitude. Your right Mr. Fusion to say that Bush’s credability isn’t to great and that should give us pause, but until I see proof that they were doing more than they say, I’m not going to condem it. I realize that they can use this simple fact(my phone calls, without a name etc) to glean one hell of a lot of info on me. But I guess it dosen’t anger me because I understand why it’s being done and I’m maybe being a bit niave about their not doing more covertly bad things.
Hell with all the calls I made to and from the U.K. as well as from Spain, Egypt, Morrocco, France to my parents, I’m probably right up there on their look at list…..lol
But seriously, if they got a federal court to agree with what they are doing, is that going to make you feel better? I doubt it. I’m torn here, because I’m a believer in the freedoms given to us by the Constitution, but how is the goverment supposed to fight the kinds of people that want to do harm to us in the year 2006? What if the court said, *you can monitor 1 million calls a week, instead of 100 million a year.* What if the call that would stop another 9/11 was the 1 million and 10th call? So where do you draw the legal line? Can you even draw a legal line?
There is no constitutional right to privacy, some say there is an *implied right*, but even thats not right, in a strict sense. In fact, it’s this false *implied right* that is the basis for Roe v Wade, and thats why it’s unconstitutional.(IMO)
I grew up believeing that most people who serve their country in goverment are not bad people, that they may not be aware of their actions sometimes, but they love their country when all is said and done. This is why I don’t rush to condem things like this until I see the proof of the wrong doing. Having said that…..I also think that goverment is to big, to intrusive and no longer in touch with the people of this country. It needs to be pared down to just what it’s supposed to do by the words of the constituion and no more, the rest belongs to the states. Maybe then we wouldn’t have the problems like this NSA thing that we have.
#27 says “if they got a federal court to agree with what they are doing, is that going to make you feel better?”
Yes, Joshua, that’s EXACTLY it. A judicial finding of probable cause is the whole ballgame. When someone in the administration or law enforcement says “let’s monitor this guy’s calls,” that carries no weight by itself. They could be trying to dig up dirt on someone they want to smear or blackmail, or they might be trying to discover the source of an embarrassing leak regarding unlawful acts within the government. You would be amazed at what government people can justify when they’re working for “the greater good.”
Requiring that a judge must determine that there’s a genuine and valid reason for the surveillance upholds the 4th Amendment principle of the right to be secure against unreasonable searches. I have no confidence that no one will ever want to monitor my calling patterns. I am, however, confident that they won’t have a valid enough reason to convince a judge that such monitoring is justified.
Regarding the NYT article, you’re right. Although the public outcry and Administration response to the article at that time focused on the international call monitoring, I can see there is also significant mention of the domestic call traffic analysis and data mining. So USA Today’s story isn’t as new a revelation as we seem to think.
Gary…..does a computor know it’s your call patterns it’s monitoring? That is a serious question, not rhetorical.
I can’t imagine a judge agreeing(as I said before) to allow the call monitoring on the scale they are supposedly doing it, but I could see a judge allowing it in a more limited scope.
Where I disagree is that what they are doing in this is actually a violation of privacy. How can anyone have a resonable expectation of privacy when using public communications? And the biggest point is that they aren’t actually listening into the calls(with this program) as they are with the fisa program.
I do see your point, but thats not how I feel about this…..yet!
Joshua, the government has made the point that names are not being specifically attached in these records, but others have charged that this is somewhat disingenuous because that information is already readily available to the NSA in other databases. After watching these folks for awhile, you learn to look carefully at their exact phrasing to see what it is that they’re NOT denying, you know? What they don’t deny is often what they’re doing, and you’re darn right if you think I’m skeptical.
You’ve put your finger on another argument I’ve seen, too, concerning “expectation of privacy.” My answer to that is, if there’s no expectation of privacy, then why do they expect to catch terrorists talking on the phone about their activities? Any surveillance preys on people acting under expectation of privacy.
Gary…..I guess I just don’t have that skepticism about goverment. I don’t like large goverment, but I still believe it’s not as malignant as some do.
Several big cases have had the defendents lawyers argueing for an *expectation of privacy* and lost. It’s usually due to using what is legally considered *public* communication. Remeber the al Quida big wigs that were caught in Yeman and Pakistan? They were using cell and those GPS type phones and thought they were safe, but they weren’t. But the minute it became public how they were caught, the others stopped using them.